Happy Father's Day
by EsmeAmelia
Summary: Sappy story about the Solo family celebrating Father's Day.
1. Chapter 1

"Happy Father's Day"

By EsmeAmelia

AN: Here's a little (extremely sappy) Father's Day treat for you. No, I don't think they really celebrate it in the Star Wars Universe, but hey, it's a fanfic, and it could possibly be celebrated there. As usual, I don't own anything, and a special thanks to Jedi Princess Jainakin, who wrote a Mother's Day fic last year and inspired me to write a Father's Day fic.

And this story is dedicated to my late father, who died the month before Father's Day when I was thirteen.

"Hey Dad!"

"Dad!"

"Dad!"

The sounds of three angelic voices drove Han out of his slumber. He fluttered his eyes open, causing the four faces staring at him to gradually come into focus. Three of the faces were leaning in at a close proximity that would normally be considered uncomfortable, but when they were his three children, the intimate distance caused a smile to break out on his face.

"HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!!" Jaina, Jacen, and Anakin shouted together.

"Children, not so loud," Leia scolded gently from her more reasonable distance. "Your father just woke up - he probably wants things to be quiet for a while."

"But Mom, he's been sleeping forever," protested seven-year-old Jaina.

"We wanna give him presents now!" said five-year-old Anakin.

"Presents?" said Han. "I think that's worth waking up for."

"So we're not?" said Jacen, pretending to be hurt.

Han slowly sat himself up on his elbows and stretched while giving a long yawn. "Hmmm...no," he said with a grin after a few seconds. "After all, what's there to see?" He ran his fingers through Jaina's brown hair. "Just the best young mechanic in the galaxy..." He rubbed Jacen's head, stirring his hair. "...the smartest animal lover in the galaxy..." He poked Anakin in the stomach, making him giggle. "...and the cutest little Jedi in the galaxy."

The children bounced on the bed on their knees, shaking Han's stiff body. "Let's get his card first," Jaina instructed the other two. "Wait here, Dad." They lept over their father's body and merrily scampered out the door.

Leia laughed as she sat down on the edge of the bed. "Happy Father's Day, honey." She leaned over and gave her husband a long Father's Day kiss, completely waking him up.

"So Jaina says I've been sleepin' forever," Han said after they pulled out of the kiss. "Just how long is that?"

"It's almost noon, that should give you a hint," said Leia, stroking her husband's shoulders. "But don't worry - the restaurant serves breakfast all day."

"What, no breakfast in bed?" Han said playfully.

"With my cooking, I think you'd be glad of that," grinned Leia, twirling a lock of her husband's hair around her finger. She leaned over to give him another long kiss. As their lips swirled together, Han wondered what he had ever done to deserve this.

"Now, even though they serve breakfast all day," Leia said once her lips were free, "I still think it's a good idea to get dressed." She slyly waved her finger to the side. "Look where I usually am at night. While you were 'sleeping forever,' I washed them for you."

Han turned to his side to find his favorite outfit of his white shirt, black vest, and Corellian Bloodstriped pants neatly laid out on Leia's side of the bed, smelling of various flowers mixed together to make a laundry soap.

"Don't complain - even you should wear clean clothes to a restaurant," said Leia.

Han gave a lopsided grin as he grabbed his clothes. "Thanks hon. I'll put these on just as soon as I've rubbed 'em in grease."

"You'd better not, or the Father's Day breakfast will be canceled," Leia said as she rose from the bed and headed for the door. "I'll leave you to get dressed - the kids are probably wondering where I put their card." She blew another kiss to Han and disappeared out the door.

Han got dressed feeling slightly dazed, perhaps from too much sleep, or more likely from the occasion they were celebrating: a holiday that, before seven years ago, he had barely known existed, much less imagined that he would one day be the center of it. _Father _had once been a painful word for him: a word that meant something he would never have. He swallowed as his thoughts wandered to the frequent times during his childhood: the times when he would shut himself away wherever he thought no one would come and huddle down into a corner, wondering what it was like to be a normal child: a child with a family. Sometimes the anger at fate for making him an unwanted orphan would explode out of him, making him scream into the dark. Other times it was the loneliness for loving parents that overtook him, making him burst into tears, knowing that no one would come to comfort him, for he was unwanted.

_Unwanted._ That word followed him to adulthood, subconsciously labeling him. It stood as something he couldn't change - a cold fact of his existence. He was born to be an outcast: a title he lived up to quite well, forming various enemies who wanted him dead, picking up different women for one-night-stands, doing whatever it took to stay alive. If anyone had told him during his smuggling days that he would one day be a family man, he probably would have taken them for being drunk.

He often wondered what kind of person his own father was. Did he even know he had a son? If so, which side of his son would he approve of most: the smuggler or the family man? There were times when he wondered what it was like to have a father to go to for advice on how to be a parent. He had Chewie, who had a son of his own, but that simply wasn't the same. Although Chewie treated Han like a son, their species differences would forever remind them that they were not father and son, but something else, something Han still wasn't sure how to define.

"Dad!"

The children dashing back into the bedroom returned him to the present moment. Jaina was waving a red envelope over her head as she skipped merrily between the other two. "Dad, come see your card!" she squealed as Jacen and Anakin grinned widely.

"A card?" Han exclaimed, pretending to be completely surprised. He took the envelope from his daughter, giving a big smile to his children, who were all staring so anxiously that it seemed the ability to blink had escaped them.

The father carefully opened the envelope, slowing his movement to further build the suspense for his children, though once he got the card out of the envelope, he opened it with a quickness that could rival a Jedi's reflexes. A holographic image popped out of the pages, showing his three smiling children frozen in time for a few seconds before the card's message started playing.

"Hi Dad! Happy Father's Day!" they all shouted together in the message.

"You're the best dad in the entire galaxy," Jacen said with vigor.

"You fly a really cool ship," said Jaina.

"And you take us for rides on it," said Jacen.

"You play games with us," said Anakin.

"We're lucky that out of all the dads in the universe, we got you," said Jaina.

"You even get us ice cream when Mom tells you not to!" Anakin exclaimed.

"ANAKIN!" the other two shouted, glaring at their younger brother.

"What?" Anakin said innocently.

Jaina's hologram quickly looked back up. "Uh, anyway Dad, Happy Father's Day!"

Han continued to stare at the card after the message ended, his children's voices replaying in his head. He slowly looked up to the faces of his real children, whose hands were clasped and eyes were wide in anticipation.

"Well Dad, did you like it?" Jacen said nervously.

Han felt a large smile stretching his muscles, a smile that couldn't dissipate if he wanted it to. He crouched down so he was on eye-level with his kids and wrapped his arms around them, squeezing them as tightly as he could without breaking their bones.

"You guys are the best kids anyone could ask for," he said.

AN: There will be one more chapter, which will be a little closer to my usual angst.


	2. Chapter 2

"Happy Father's Day"

By EsmeAmelia

AN: Hey, I know it's been a long time - I've been working a lot and my other fics distracted me from this little one. Anyway, thanks to all the reviewers. I think this chapter will show why this story's dedicated to my late dad.

Chapter 2

Leia watched her husband pour a rather large amount of syrup on his pancakes. The flowered tie Anakin had given him hung loosely around his neck, probably receiving a few drops of syrup itself. The children had been constantly asking him if he liked his presents, to which Han would always laugh and playfully rub their heads. The wrench set from Jaina and the flavored caf mixes from Jacen sat in the center of the table, given a place of reverence.

"Did you celebrate Father's Day when you were little, Dad?" Jaina suddenly asked.

Leia felt her fork slide across her plate as her eyes widened. The children knew that Han had grown up an orphan - why would she ask a question like that?

Han flinched only slightly, his hand stilled when it was halfway to his mouth. "No...I didn't."

Jaina swallowed, her seven-year-old intuition seemingly speaking to her. "Oh...sorry. I just wondered if...well maybe you had someone special who was _like_ your dad..."

"Isn't Chewie like your dad?" Jacen said suddenly.

Han chewed his food for a rather long time before answering. "Well...I suppose you could say that."

"He takes care of you, right?" asked Anakin, syrup dribbling down his chin.

"Well...yup."

"And he helps you out with stuff?" said Jaina.

"Uh-huh, he does."

"So I think Chewie's like your dad," Jacen said simply, as if there were no other option.

Han slowly gave his lopsided grin. "Yup...I think you're right." He seemingly tried to conceal the surprise in his voice, but didn't do a very good job. "Maybe I shoulda gotten him somethin'..." A long sigh interrupted his words, his grin fading away. "Guess I really should've..."

Leia concentrated on making her smile as consoling as possible. "Han, I'm sure he won't mind a gift that's a day late." She reached across the table and gripped his sticky fingers. "I'll bet right now he's having a celebration with his own family, anyway."

Han managed to say, "Probably," before stuffing another large forkfull of pancake in his mouth. Leia knew better than to press the matter after that - she just hoped the kids did as well.

Though Han was pretending to be engrossed in his food, Leia could sense him thinking. She could probably sense that even if she wasn't Force-sensitive. For him, this was a day for celebration, but also a day of mourning his lost childhood.

Similarly, this was also a day of both celebration and mourning for her.

Unlike Han, she had celebrated this day during her childhood. She remembered the parties, the outings, the presents, the smiles on Bail Organa's face when his daughter tried to make every Father's Day better than the previous one.

Her food suddenly tasted dry. It had been many years since Bail's death, and although her wounds had for the most part healed, there was still that empty spot in her soul. There were times when she scolded herself for not thinking of her adopted father more often, but she would usually conclude that he wouldn't want her to grieve him every minute of every day.

She often wondered if her life would be different now if Bail hadn't died, if she still had her homeworld. What would he think of Han? What would he think of her children? What would he think of the person she had become? Somehow an answer like, "he would have loved them" wasn't satisfactory. She wanted to know precisely _what_ he would have loved. Though she could guess, she could never have a certain answer to that question. Saying phrases that began with, "He would have loved..." always gave her a twinge of guilt - it felt like she was trying to take over his memory, forgetting that he was his own person, not just a collection of her memories.

"Dad, can we work on the Falcon later?"

Her daughter's voice jolted her back into the real world. She looked up and saw her husband flashing his so-familiar grin at the girl, answering, "Love to, sweetheart, but this is your old man's day off."

"I would think you'd like working on the Falcon on your day off," Leia said lightheartedly.

"But would _you_ like that, honey?" said Han.

"Probably not," Leia said, flashing her own grin at her husband, disguising the slight lurch of guilt she felt for lingering in her own life when this was Han's day.

She shifted her focus to her youngest son, his cheeks bulged full of food, his hand patting his father as he had been doing on and off for the entire meal, and no matter how much food Han was helping himself to, he was always able to rub his son's hair.

Anakin was already showing that he would look like his father when he grew up - right down to his messy brown hair and his lopsided smile. Her youngest son brought someone else long dead to Leia's mind.

Her other father...

The father she never knew...not who he _really _was. She knew his shell, his exterior, his mask - the one who preyed on fear and pain, the person she long thought had been his only identity. The hands that had gripped her on the Death Star...they weren't his real hands. The face that had watched emotionless as Han was lowered into the carbon freezer...it wasn't his real face.

Sometimes she envied Luke for being able to see his real face, for being there when he died, for getting a glimpse of what he was really like. All she had of her father was what her brother told her.

And was that enough?

At first it wasn't anywhere close to being enough. She remembered her recurring nightmares, how she was often forced to relive Alderaan's death at the hands of her father. She remembered how every time Han removed his shirt, he revealed scars from the switchboard torture that would never heal. She used to kiss those scars while silently cursing the one who had inflicted them, thinking that she would never in her life accept that she was related to that monster.

Yet somehow, she had done just that.

There had never been a moment when she had consciously let go of her hatred. Perhaps time had played its part in healing her wounds...but no, her planet's destruction was too great a devastation to be mended by something so simple as the passing of time. In fact, it still wasn't completely mended.

No, mending wasn't the right word.

"Dad, you like my tie?"

"Sure do, Anakin, sure do."

_Anakin._ Leia once thought she would never hear Han - or herself, for that matter - say that name with such love. When Leia named her third child, she had chosen a name that her heart and soul felt was a name of honor. Someday, when her child was old enough to understand the significance of his name, she hoped he would cherish it. It was indeed a name of honor - a name that represented heroism, redemption, and forgiveness.

Forgiveness...

"Mom, Dad, can we toast?"

Her reverie was broken by her daughter, who was raising her half-full glass of juice in a gesture of honor to her father.

Leia smiled at the child, raising her own glass that was nearly empty. "Of course we can, sweetheart." She cleared her throat, signaling to the males that they should follow suit. "To Han Solo, wonderful husband, wonderful father. May we enjoy many glorious Father's Days to come. Happy Father's Day."

"Happy Father's Day," the children repeated, clinking their glasses against Han's. The father gave his large grin as he drank - Leia felt ultimate joy coming from him.

Leia gulped down the last of her iced caf, adding a final thought to the toast, sending it through the Force in hopes that perhaps those who were passed on might hear it.

_To all fathers._

THE END


End file.
